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Sunday, February 14, 2010

Nothing to buzz about

Clearly Google is struggling with innovation, and they are starting to look like the Yahoos of the world when it comes to social networking.
It seems that everything they try is failing, and buzz looks like another one of these. Time will tell, but for now I am not impressed.

So what's going on? Lots of cool stuff is coming out, and employee are said to have 20% of their time that they can allocate to special project, but then whatever is produced is only a half success at best. Lots of buzz that falls flat after a while. I am talking here about Google video, Google talk, Google check out, Google Lattitude, Google wave, and I suspect Google buzz.

My take on this is that Google is too fat. They make good money from ads revenue, and they are not hungry enough that they need to go to the bottom of the solution that they are offering to make them really appealing on the business side.

One exception: Google mail, which evolved into Google Apps. Clearly they have something there, a very compelling solution for businesses to handle the typical basic services like email, and doc sharing. It took a while to get here, but it is happening.

The good news for Google is that they have money, so they can buy their way into better solution. And they did get their hands on cool technologies: the most famous was YouTube as a replacement for Google video, but also Writely for Google docs, Grandcentral for Google Voice, Etherpad, Gizmo - to name a few.

So is there a lesson here that good innovation cannot by design come from the corporation after it has reach a certain size?
All teams inside are geared to optimize the delivery of their solutions, and protect their market, and even with 20% time for other things they are not in the right state of mind to create, really think outside the box to the point where it could be counter to their bespoke solutions. The people inside cannot think of the Google mothership as the enemy against which they can produce a better app.

After many years of trying to create software exclusively from the inside, Oracle went into a buying spree. And probably acquisitions are where the next hot things will come from in Google's case too. Not to say that you should not experiment, if anything to understand the issues before you go an buy something, but I do not expect too much from Google buzz to turn Google into a social networking success...


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Monday, February 08, 2010

Entrepreneur Commons Academy: engaging your community and its influencers

Do you need to understand better what is being said about your company and your product?
Would you like to get a better with online communities within your ecosystem?

Then this Entreco web event is for you.
At the end of this webinar, you will understand:

* How to identify key social influencers in my target market?
* What are hot topics people are talking about?
* How current topics and discussions relate to my brand and
competitors?
* How to establish a relationship with key social influencers?
* How to mix buzz, outreach and content marketing to improve your
visibility and attention in key communities?

PRESENTER: Dominique Lahaix - co-founder and CEO of eCairn
Dominique has over 15 years of experience in e-marketing, knowledge engineering and software development. Prior to founding eCairn he was the CEO and founder of Cairnalys, an e-mail marketing technology company, which customers included companies such as eBay. Prior Cairnalys, he was manager of WW Consulting Practice at HP Emerging services. Dominique previously held engineering and engineering management positions at HP, McDonnell Douglas Information Systems and Tymnet. Dominique holds a Management degree from the prestigious INSEAD European business school and an engineering degree from Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon, France.


WHERE: this is an online event at Entrepreneur Commons Academy
http://entreco.supercoolschool.com/

To register: http://entreco100211.eventbrite.com/

HOW IT WORKS: Once you register for the event, you will receive an email invite to join the Entrepreneur Commons academy, where you will be able to join the class.

Note that this event is a live online event using the Adobe Connect platform - you will need a computer and a headset, and ideally a webcam to participate.

Once you signup you will receive an invite to join the Entreco supercoolschool space, where you can then access the online event.

If you cannot attend the live event, you should consider becoming a member of the Entrepreneur Commons Academy so that you can access the video archive of the event, and other events that will happen throughout the year.